Backer awards for AVWW art Kickstarter (canceled)

[Aklyon]

On what I call the epic tier of pledges for some KS' (The $1,000+ ones, like 'play starcraft with us' or 'have a lunch with us', limited ~3 people), theres usually a disclaimer like "Must be nearby x area" or "If you're planning on this, message us first to make sure its possible". You could use that kind of disclaimer for the stuff, but on a much smaller scale.

[Brise Bonbons]

Personally I really like the idea of the settlement having a memorial building with the names of some backers inside. You never even have to go in if you don't want to, and it could be integrated in the fluff really easily: "this memorial is dedicated to all those who sacrificed to build this settlement" yadda yadda. Maybe let people write their own epitaphs (within reason and subject to editing for tone) at higher support tiers.

Other than that, I would suggest some (in-game) vanity items for backers:

• Special heat and cold suits (higher tier, since they require animation)
• Special spell effects
• Special time period themed crate and box sprites
• Custom doodads for decorating your settlement (maybe have a tier that lets you help design them; at $100, you can design a doodad that the $25 backers get)
• Summon monster abilities with unique skins (i.e. summon rhino now has armor)
• the ability to find unique backer-only gifts for NPCs
• NPCs with tweaked sprites. I.e. your industrial age NPCs can spawn with a unique color scheme or can have a special top hat, or you have a chance of finding a stone age princess with a fancy headdress and royal jewels. Nothing that requires making totally new art, just tweaks here and there to give them unique flavor

Now, personally I am not crazy about the idea of unique things like this in game, because as I've said elsewhere, when I support a KS like this I want all the content to go to everyone; the last thing I want is to pay extra to have something that many players won't have. I would prefer the above rewards be offered to all players as stretch goals. But at this point I'm just trying to brainstorm and throw out all the purely aesthetic options I can think of.

I could also see offering the above items with specific KS reward tiers, with the clear understanding that they would later be offered to the community as a whole in DLC or a "sprite expansion pack". So basically they'd be timed exclusives for KS backers. I know it rubs some folks the wrong way when their unique rewards later become available to the unwashed masses, but it seems more charitable/fair to me. Sometimes people just don't have the money to back a KS during its 30 day run, and it's nice to give them access to things they might want to give you money for later.

[keith.lamothe]

Exclusive rewards (i.e. "the backer gets this item, no one else does") really doesn't work for a bunch of reasons; one is that the related logic and graphical assets have to be distributed to everyone anyway (for multiplayer to work) so what would be the point?

[madcow]

Another thing I've seen from some KSers is getting your picture put into the game. In this case, since it is an art revamp, perhaps a limited number could send their pic to the art studio to have one of the character profile pictures based on that. Obviously subject to stylistic changes for the age they're put in for and this would obviously have to be a high tier limited number reward.

[Brise Bonbons]

Exclusive rewards (i.e. "the backer gets this item, no one else does") really doesn't work for a bunch of reasons; one is that the related logic and graphical assets have to be distributed to everyone anyway (for multiplayer to work) so what would be the point?

Don't ask me what the point is, I've never understood the appeal myself.

I just ran across the KS for Moon Intern (linked from RPS) for the first time today, and I think their KS tiers are very cool and well done. Might be worth taking a look at. In short, you can get your likeness/personality put into the game as an NPC, with the prestige of the NPC's job increasing to match the tier you are backing at.

[Wanderer]

Kickstarter/PBS drives/etc always seemed a bit odd to me.

"What do I get for my money?"
"The thing you're helping us build."
"Okay, what ELSE do I get for my money?"
"Errr, hold on a second..."

PBS used to allow people to show their support with physical items.  T-Shirts, Ballcaps, whatever.  "I supported AVWW and all I got was a lousy T-Shirt and Great Art!"  Pick your poison.

An in-game mention is cool... but what about a simple silk-screen T-Shirt with the AVWW background/logo on it in a square on the front at $100.  A ballcap with something iconic from the rebuild in the logo slot.  There's a lot of things you can do with that (with relatively smaller investment to the reward tier) that allows people to get 'something cool' other than their name inscribed in a building everyone ignores.

It's not a solution, just another option.

Edit2: One of the concerns for doing physical items is they usually have to be ordered in 'lots'.  If you can't fill the majority of a lot it doesn't make it financially worth it.  Put a minimum # of backers at a level to receive a physical item in the text and inform them they'll be 'kicked up a tier for items' if not enough backers at a particular level are received.  So a ballcap might upgrade to a T-Shirt ( or vice versa) if you only get 7 people at x tier but 120 at the one above it.

Edit: At the stupid levels, one of the things that impresses many followers of Arcen is the speed of patch deployments and the like.  I don't know how y'all feel about daring to let someone into your home from the unwashed masses (since you guys don't work from offices) but one thing that would particularly tempt ME is to be able to ride-along for a day or two and learn your techniques.

However, being a coder I know just how well I personally work with a newbie stuck to my chair hanging over my shoulder, so maybe that's NOT such a great idea.

[Penumbra]

What would it take to make tradable TF2 Hats? I've seen those forums, people will spend tons of money to buy things that come with a hat. You design 4 hats, give away 1 at $35, 2 $60, 3 at $80 and all 4 at $100. Make a 5th "special" hat at $500 that has limited quantities.

It's like a physical hat, on without all that pesky shipping. Heck, it might make Valve actually activate your serial codes

[Aklyon]

Glyph/Taking-Damage-Glyph hat?

[Martyn van Buren]

I rather like the idea of having a little custom-made challenge dungeon under the settlement with bosses named after backers.  I suppose it could have a few lower-tier bosses who can take the name of any backer at random and a big one or two that only take the names of top backers.

[Coppermantis]

Perhaps, somewhat along the lines of Martyn's idea, add a special ancient temple-style building in the first settlement/intro mission that has a single room with statues of high-level donators.

[Aklyon]

Perhaps, somewhat along the lines of Martyn's idea, add a special ancient temple-style building in the first settlement/intro mission that has a single room with statues of high-level donators.

A fallen spire, perhaps?

[_K_]

For the whole "Suggest your X idea" you probably could set up a subforum with dedicated threads, where people who seriously intend to pledge the given sums could put up their ideas for approval.

They put the idea, you either approve it, or say "nope". This works as a signal that its safe to pledge the money requesting for that feature.

Would be quite a pain to manage i guess, i cant see any simpler safe way to pull this idea off.

[KDR_11k]

For the $100-$250+ dollar range, instead of physical rewards, have you considered allowing backers to suggest some minor thing to implement in the game? Doesn't have to be large or unreasonable (think spell or enchant or item), and it would avoid the whole "exclusive reward" problem. Then again, this costs money too... but hopefully not as much as a giant physical package.

Of course I can't put enough money in to do this, but I think it is worth it for the people who believe in the project.

Probably not all that useful since Arcen is so responsive to suggestions even without bribery.

[x4000]

Well -- this thread is thankfully moot.  Unless something drastic changes, which I don't think it will (knock on wood), I don't think we're going to do a kickstarter.  We're going to cut the scope of the original reskin by a bit and be a little bit smarter about how we allocate art funds (what was cheap to do before is now not the same, but new things are cheap instead). 

Ultimately it gives me a bad taste in my mouth to ask for players to give money for a game that they already bought; and particularly since it would trap me into having to do updates for this game on a certain scale even if sales didn't pick up after a reskin.  That's something that could be really damaging to the company if I got things stuck in a certain fashion (where we completed the art but then there wasn't enough interest from players to sustain ongoing free updates on a huge scale after that), because our reputation is our most important thing and I'd really hate anyone -- especially our most core fans -- to feel like they got burned by supporting us in a kickstarter or similar.  Compared to that, an extra few thousand dollars one way or the other on Arcen's part on art isn't going to matter.

I'll have a fuller post about this later tonight, but for now I just wanted to go ahead and lock this thread since it's no longer relevant.